


Pin Feathers

by ScrollingKingfisher



Series: Birds of a Feather [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, The fluff is here guys, Wing Grooming, Wingfic, moulting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 03:09:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8873482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScrollingKingfisher/pseuds/ScrollingKingfisher
Summary: Sam didn’t even notice the first time that Gabriel moulted at the bunker.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aria_Lerendeair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aria_Lerendeair/gifts).



> Happy Birthday to Aria_Lerendier, I hope you like it!
> 
> Edit 27/06/17- cleaned up and tidied in time for the sequel!

   Sam didn’t even notice the first time that Gabriel moulted at the bunker.

 

   It was a dreary morning in autumn when Dean looked up from his morning coffee with a frown.

 

   “Hey, have you seen Gabriel anywhere?”

 

   Sam hesitated, pausing before he turned a page. “Uh… no, actually.”

 

   And, huh. Now that Sam thought back on it, the past week had been surprisingly prank free. He didn’t think he’d seen Gabriel once. Which was unusual, as he was always popping in and out to annoy them. In the last six months Sam had woken up with his hair plaited so often that eventually he just left it in. Gabriel seemed to have a particular fondness for teasing Sam. Not that Sam minded that much, as long as Gabriel didn’t start feeding people to alligators again.

 

   So where was he?

 

   Sam poked his head out into the corridor and yelled his name. No response.

 

   He checked in all of Gabriel’s usual lurking spots, but the archangel wasn’t there. Slightly concerned, he even called Cas to find out if he knew, but all he got was an evasive answer about ‘private rituals’, which sounded suspiciously like an angelic euphemism for sex. Dean pulled a face at him and shrugged, then pushed another stack of mouldering research papers at him.

 

   Sam didn’t have much more time to worry because Gabriel appeared the next morning, looking more rumpled than usual, tired even. He evaded Sam’s suspicious questioning by tampering with Dean’s coffee, and soon his mysterious absence was forgotten.

 

.o0o.

 

   The next year, Sam noticed Gabriel’s absence much more quickly. He had been dropping in to stay more often (and he might have also spent significantly more time in Sam’s room or draped over him on the couch), so it only took about a day for Sam to realise that he hadn’t seen him.

 

   “Have you seen Gabriel?” He asked Dean.

 

   Dean snorted. “Not since yesterday when I caught him trying to steal your laundry. Can you tell your boyfriend to stop taking our clothes? This ain’t a goodwill!”

 

   Sam stifled a grin and turned to leave, pausing in the corridor.

 

   “Gabriel?” He called, his voice echoing up and down the long passages.

 

   No reply.

 

   Frowning slightly, he poked his head into the door of the room that Gabriel had established as his own. Nothing. Dark and silent.

 

   Puzzled and a little worried, Sam set off down the corridor, peeking into every room. Empty. No one in the library, or the armoury. No one in the kitchen, the bathrooms, the dungeon, the first five storage rooms, the garage, the firing range…

 

   Scowling in frustration, Sam was about to give up and go back upstairs (maybe to find a summoning spell because he really was getting worried now), when he heard a distant noise. He froze, straining his ears. There it was again. A quiet rustle down a particularly dark and dusty corridor.

 

   Pulling the gun out of the waistband of his jeans, Sam crept down the hallway, his feet making no noise against the tiles. The quiet rustles continued as he inched the door open, the dim light making it hard to see what was in the room.

 

   He peered around and suddenly remembered where he was. Back when they first found the bunker they had been exploring and found this place. A small abandoned swimming pool, completely drained, the bottom covered in a fine layer of dust and grit. He and Dean hadn’t been in the room since.

 

   It definitely wasn’t abandoned any more though. There was someone in there, something moving in the dark indistinct mass, all crowded up against one corner at the bottom of the empty pool.

 

   Sam stepped forwards, squinting into the gloom and trying to aim his gun, not looking where he was going. His foot hit a pebble which rolled off the edge into the pool, and he winced as it bounced on the tiles with a clatter. The shuffling movement stopped as both Sam and the whatever-it-was froze. There was a tense silence. Sam’s fingers twitched on the trigger.

 

   “Sam?”

 

   The voice was hoarse and hushed, nothing like the usual brash tones Sam was used to, so it took a second or two for him to place it. He hesitantly lowered the gun.

 

   “Gabriel?”

 

   There was a rustle and the material lying in the middle of the pile (nest?) seemed to shift a little. There was Gabriel, bare-chested with his hair sticking up in ruffled disarray around his head and-

 

   Sam did a double take. Then he just stared, dumbfounded.

 

   “Gabriel, are those… wings??”

 

   The limbs shook off the blankets that had been covering them in a quick movement and stretched out behind Gabriel’s shoulders. They shivered slightly before folding more closely against his back, like arms that had gone to sleep. Not two, not four, but six of them.

 

   Sam couldn’t tear his eyes away, gaping at the shifting mass of feathers shuffling behind Gabriel’s shoulders. The long primaries were a rich bronze, gleaming and almost metallic, but the finer feathers on the inside of the wings were a soft, vulnerable creamy tan. They trembled slightly under his gaze and folded in tight, almost a defensive move. Sam finally wrenched his eyes away from the wings and was surprised to see that Gabriel was _blushing_.

 

   Gabriel never blushed.

 

   He was cringing too, fisting his hands in the blankets as though he wished that he could wrap himself in them. He looked almost… embarrassed? Ashamed?

 

   “Yeah, I’m sorry about these. I can’t put the damn moth-eaten things away when they’re like this, just leave me to it and I’ll be up in about a week-”

 

   “No!” Sam realised that he had almost shouted when Gabriel flinched, his wings spreading slightly. Sam forced himself to lower his voice.

 

   “Please don’t, they’re amazing. I’ve never seen…” His eyes played over the feathers. Why would Gabriel ever be ashamed of his wings when they looked like _that_?

 

   “They’re nothing to look at at the moment,” Gabriel grumbled defensively, wings pulling in impossibly closer against his back. “I’m in the middle of moult, so they’re not at their best.”

 

   “They’re beautiful,” Sam stated honestly. Gabriel’s blush spread down his neck and he shuffled a little in his blankets.

 

   “You just think that because you’ve never seen anyone else’s,” he muttered quietly, but Sam caught it. He frowned. Self-consciousness was something he had never seen on Gabriel before. It was so unusual seeing him so shy about something that Sam didn’t quite know what to do. He hesitated, shuffling from foot to foot.

 

   “Can I come into your… uh… nest?”

 

   Gabriel nodded in what was obviously meant to be nonchalance, but his eyes were fixed to Sam as sharp and golden as a hawk. His entire body was tense as Sam dropped down to the bottom of the pool and walked forwards. Sam made the last few steps very slowly, broadcasting every move until he was sitting right on the edge of the nest, just a few feet away. He didn’t dare come any closer.

 

   Even though from a distance it looked scruffy, there was an aura about the nest that was heavenly, sacred. It was made of layers and layers of blankets, some the dull grey of the men of letter’s store rooms, others brighter colours. Sam recognised several of his more hideous flannels, an old band shirt that Dean had been looking for for weeks, and a whole heap of towels that they had stolen from motel rooms over the years. Around the edge where Sam was there was a lining of feathers, the great primaries woven together to form a sturdy outer barrier, the inside lined with fuzzy down. And right in the middle of the giant intricate contraption Gabriel was sitting watching him, on high alert.

 

   Now that he was closer, he could see what Gabriel meant about the moult. In each wing there were a pair of gaps where feathers were missing. The feathers on one side of the gaps were old and frayed, whereas those between them glimmered with an almost oily sheen, darker and iridescent in the low light. He almost reached out to touch with childish curiosity, but then he caught sight of Gabriel’s expression.

 

   He looked cautious, guarded. Like any sudden movement might have him with his back against the pool wall with his blade out. Sam didn’t think he’d ever seen Gabriel this tense, not when facing down monsters or even other angels. This was serious.

 

   Sam carefully pulled himself together and drew his hand back, resting it on his lap. For whatever reason, this seemed to be important to Gabriel. He didn’t want to make a mistake here.

 

   “Is there anything I can do to help?” he asked cautiously.

 

   Gabriel blinked, obviously caught off guard by the unexpected question. “Um… not really?”

 

   Sam eyed Gabriel, really looking at him. “Nothing? Not even, I dunno, something to eat?” He could have sworn that Gabriel’s arms hadn’t been that thin a few days ago.

 

   “Burgers,” Gabriel replied immediately. Sam was a little surprised, usually given the choice Gabriel would go for the sweets every time. But maybe, he reasoned, his growing feathers needed protein? Moult had to be a pretty taxing process. That would certainly explain where the meatloaf went that Dean had been bitching about.

 

   Sam nodded, getting up, careful not to damage the nest. “Okay. We can do that.”

 

   Dean gave him a weird look when Sam suddenly demanded burgers for lunch. His eyebrows only rose higher when Sam grabbed all the remaining burgers (Dean had cooked an extra large batch) to take with him down to the basement.

 

   “Dude, did you grow an extra stomach?”

 

   Sam just shrugged non-comitally, and luckily Dean left it at that. Sam hadn’t really felt that he should tell Dean what was going on, since both of the angels seemed reluctant to.

 

   Gabriel seemed much more relaxed about having Sam in the room when he returned. The burgers were practically snatched out of his hands as soon as he dropped down to the bottom of the pool.

 

   “Gabriel!”

 

   But Gabriel had scuttled back to the nest and was too busy eating. Sam watched with wide eyes as he polished off a pound and a half of meat without even seeming to stop for breath.

 

   When he finally finished, he leaned back into the blankets with a sigh and a content burp. Sam shifted closer, into the ring of feathers, and Gabriel watched him lazily out of one half-lidded eye.

 

   “Can I… touch?”

 

   Gabriel seemed to debate for a second, then nodded slowly, stretching one wing out towards him. Sam reached out, his fingers trembling, and sucked in a breath when his fingertips touched the silky-smooth softness of the feathers.

 

   They were corporeal. Sam had had no idea that angels could manifest their wings like this, never mind that they had to moult the feathers. There was nothing mysterious or ethereal about them where they lay splayed out around Gabriel. Now that he was more relaxed they extended a good ten feet around him, and they were only half spread. Sam traced up the thick vane of one flight feather, strong and stiff under his fingers.

 

   Until it wasn’t. One second he was ever so gently stroking the feather, and the next minute it was in his hand, detached from the wing entirely. Gabriel chuckled quietly, amused by the look of shock and horror on Sam’s face.

 

   “I told you I was moulting! Don’t worry so much, it was about to fall out anyway. Just put it in the nest.” He gestured towards the edge. Sam turned and very gently placed the feather at the side, trying to weave it into the intricate structure. He didn’t think he’d done that well at it, but Gabriel nodded at him and smiled, so he couldn’t have done too badly.

 

  For the next few days Sam helped Gabriel. He spent most of his time in the nest, running his fingers through the feathers, preening them while Gabriel talked. And with six wings, Gabriel needed a lot of preening. Sam had no idea what Cas had told Dean to get him to stop quizzing them, but he was glad about the meals that appeared outside the door at regular intervals. Gabriel slept a lot, and ate a lot, and spent a lot of time bitching to Sam about how uncomfortable it was growing new feathers.

 

   The new feathers in question were strange and alien-looking, more like spines than feathers. They grew so fast that Sam could have sworn that he could see them getting longer before his eyes. Once they had grown to almost their full length they swelled, the hard outer layer turning pale and flaking off to reveal the new feather, unfurling from its tightly curled casing. Dust from the feathers was everywhere, getting in Sam’s hair and under his fingernails, probably because Gabriel had gotten into the habit of covering him with his wings while they slept. It left an almost oily sheen and a pleasantly sweet, slightly musty smell that seemed to cling to clothes and skin.

 

   Sam didn’t mind it though. It was so warm in the nest. And it had been so long since he had really relaxed after the stress and nerves of one too many hunts. There was always something on his mind, a new case, or the next world-endangering problem, or the threat of nightmares. But somehow he found that he could finally relax here, curled up with Gabriel in the dried out bottom of the swimming pool.

 

   Five days later, the new feathers had all grown in, even the small ones along the leading edge and alulas. The wings shone with health, the newly golden tips of each feather almost shimmering. With a grin and one last flourish, Gabriel folded his wings back into invisibility with a soft _pop_ and stood up, stretching.

 

   “Well, thank fuck that’s over for another twelve months.” He hopped up onto the lip of the pool then offered Sam a hand and a smirk to pull him up.

 

.o0o.

 

   Life went back to normal after that. Gabriel was obviously pleased that his moult was over, but Sam couldn’t help feeling sorry that he wouldn’t get to see those amazing wings again for at least another year.

 

   So Sam didn’t expect it when Cas pushed a thick book across the table to him with a very determined look on his face.

 

   “Um, Cas? What’s this? I’m kind of working on that Atlantic sea monsters thing for Garth, you could ask De-”

 

   “It is a book on angelic nesting practices,” Cas interrupted.

 

   Sam slowly pulled the book towards himself. “Okay, but why do I need a book on nesting practices?”

 

   Cas rolled his shoulders, disgruntled. “I was simply surprised that Gabriel let you into his nest, that was all. You didn’t seem to be aware of the… connotations of that act, and knowing Gabriel he will never tell you. In general, angels only build nests when they are in a place or with a person that they feel that they can trust completely.” He eyed Sam for a moment, then sighed and said more quietly, “Moulting is a very vulnerable process. We are flightless, mostly powerless, and especially for an angel as powerful as Gabriel it’s rather disconcerting. Usually only mates are allowed in close proximity when we moult. I thought you should know.”

 

   And then Cas just walked off, as though he hadn’t just dropped a massive bombshell.

 

   Sam gaped after him. Mates? Yeah, sure, he and Gabriel had fooled around. But he had known (even if privately he did wish that Gabriel wanted something more), that to Gabriel their relationship was casual. A bit of fun. And if that was all he wanted, then Sam was fine. He was.

 

   (But what if it wasn’t just that?)

 

   (What if…)

 

   Sam read the book cover to cover. The more he read, the more hope and anticipation curled in his gut, but he had to know for sure. He couldn’t get this wrong.

 

   In the end, Sam went to Gabriel.

 

   He knocked on the door, listening for the call to come in. When it came, he shuffled inside and made a beeline for the bed where Gabriel was sitting, playing with making different coloured lights appear. Gabriel glanced up.

 

   “Samster, what’s up? Is it one of those nights?”

 

   Sam sat next to him, hands between his knees. “Sort of.”

 

   Gabriel must have noticed his serious mood because he vanished all the lights but one, which floated over to Sam and hovered right in front of him. Sam kept his eyes on the glowing ball as he talked.

 

   “So, I found a book on angel nesting habits.”

 

   Out of the corner of his eye Sam saw Gabriel’s shoulders stiffen. Without taking his eyes off the ball of light, he reached out and put a hand gently on Gabriel’s knee. The tense muscle relaxed, ever so slightly.

 

   “Well, we don’t let just anyone into our nests you know, Sammy,” Sam finally turned to look at Gabriel. His expression was guarded, but hopeful. “So, now you know, will you be joining me for a fun week of getting coated in feather dust again next year?” Trying to be casual, but failing hopelessly.

 

   “You bet I will,” Sam told him seriously. “If you’ll have me. I’m nothing special.”

 

   Gabriel stared at him in disbelief, then laughed. His eyes sparkled with the warm affection that only showed itself when Sam was around. Gabriel rolled his shoulders and with a rush of wind the wings were there again, filling the room and draping themselves over Sam’s shoulders like a feathered cloak.

 

   “Oh, Sammy. When are you gonna get this into your thick skull? You’re special to _me_.”

 


End file.
